| eDay: Your Own Italian Language Newspaper |
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Part 1: Finding Italian Language Reading Material Online
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"I'm studying Italian and would like to find an Italian-language print magazine that I can read at lunch, in bed..."
CLAMSHELL
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Once upon a time, if you didn't live in Italy and wanted to read an Italian–language newspaper or magazine there were only a few choices to satisfy your logophilic urge. If you were fortunate to live near a large metropolitan area, it was sometimes possible to find a newsstand specializing in foreign publications that carried Corriere della Sera or La Repubblica, the two national general interest papers. If you happened to be traveling via airplane, some international airport kiosks sold Panorama or L'Espresso, glossy newsweekly magazines. But due to the vagaries of publishing and distribution, distance, and lack of marketability, most Italophiles, expatriates, travelers, and students were left without any up–to–date Italian language reading material.
Infostrada Changes Everything
Then, with the advent of the Internet things changed dramatically. Many Italian publications launched Web sites that mirrored the content and features of their traditional offline publications. Anyone with an Internet connection, from any part of the world, could log on and access news and information about il Bel Paese. Students could practice their language lessons while learning about current events in Italy. I tifosi (fanatical soccer fans) could follow their favorite local club, check the results of the latest matches, and browse the standings. Italian business travelers could keep informed of the latest financial news from Piazza Affari (Italy's version of Wall Street, which is located in Milano) and economic trends. News bulletins, facts, and figures that previously were either impossible or difficult to obtain were now available at the click of a computer mouse.
What immediately became apparent, though, were the inherent limitations of the new technology. Download times were slow, browser windows were cludgy to navigate, computer screens were small, and neither interminable scrolling nor clicking to another page was convenient. Besides, these sites weren't really newspapers or magazines on the web. Reading them usually meant printing out reams of paper and reading the articles offline. That was a halfway solution, since the text oftentimes overran the page template or users had to tweak complex printer configurations to generate a legible print out.
In response, Web sites attempted all sorts of tricks to get around these obstacles. The "print this article" function was one common solution, but then the articles had no context. Some writers and editors heeled to the machine, and only wrote small overviews to fit on one "page." The problem, of course, was trying to shoehorn the traditional paradigm of what constituted a broadsheet onto a screen that offered a completely different reading and browsing experience. Designers and content managers even continued to use terms like "below the fold," completely ignoring the fact that a computer screen was not a tabloid. It was a clumsy, awkward way to retrieve information from the Web, and most importantly, offered little in the way of ad revenue for the sites, a crucial part of their financial viability.
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